As Gerry is my witness

AS GERRY IS MY WITNESS

By Phillip Layton

Gerry slouched in his seat, staring blankly at the control panel designed especially for space pilots, rigged so that he could not use it. He was in a standard space vehicle patrol pod, locked in autopilot and hurtling at top speed towards a recently discovered black hole.

It had only been ten years since Francois Sevuelle had discovered the medium sized black hole hovering within a couple of light years from Sirius. The object was immediately claimed for the EU and the European Space Agency subsequently made plans to rendezvous with the black hole and perform experiments. It was labelled the “Singularity Project”.

It was the standard procedure for the ESA to recruit guinea pigs for a space research project just in case an experiment required first hand observation with no hope of survival. In this case, the ESA recruited twenty guinea pigs, one of which was Gerry – an irreverent Irish widower with a graduate degree in astrophysics who had spent the majority of his off world career mining oxygen on the moon.
It was not considered unique to be qualified in astrophysics during the current period of space expansion. To get the most lucrative employment required off world qualification through the ESA, and this usually required a degree in astrophysics or an equivalent space related discipline as well as the necessary physical aptitude. As a result, astrophysics was as common a talking subject on Earth as politics or the weather – as Gerry himself would say, “The Poincare Conjecture’s as easy as writin’ my fookin’ name.”

Gerry was disturbed by the voice of the senior physics officer on board the research vessel Marie Curie; he was a Pole by the name of Captain Stanislaw Wozniak, and he was Gerry's immediate supervisor. Gerry liked and respected Wozniak, but still could not resist giving him the brutal moniker of “Captain Wanker”. Regardless of the cruel naming and baiting that occurred between the two, they enjoyed each other’s company.

“Have you noticed anything yet, O’Hare?” Wozniak attempted to maintain protocol, referring to Gerry by his surname. This irked Gerry to some extent, and Wozniak knew it.

“Nothing, Wanker.” Gerry replied. “I do feel a little bored, but I’m unsure whether that has to do with the singularity. I may have to run a couple of tests.”

Wozniak chuckled over the speaker. “That may require taking your hand out of your trousers. You’re not going to find the singularity down there.”

“Nor is it likely to be in the carrot up your bum,” replied Gerry. “You should do what every self respecting rabbit does with a carrot and eat it.” It was customary for many EU citizens to call Polish people “rabbits”. In the two hundred years since they had joined the EU, Poland had slowly grown to surpass France, Germany and the UK in power and population, due to overwhelming numbers of Russian and Belarussian immigrants and rapidly growing industry. They had the most seats in the European parliament, and often the greatest chance of securing high positions in European government departments such as the ESA. They were not begrudged this success though – everybody loved the Poles because even when they did have the power, they refused to succumb to having the power complex that had infected so many of their European compatriots in the past.

Wozniak cut the frivolity short. “Alright Gerry, we should probably strap you into the communications station – you’re less than five minutes from the event horizon.”

“Roger that.” Gerry stood up and moved towards the communications station, rigged to take account of his every experience while travelling through the event horizon and towards the gravitational singularity produced by the black hole. The station was essentially a seat with a brain wave receiving antenna strapped around Gerry’s head. The antenna received Gerry’s brain waves and transmitted them directly to the research vessel. There it was translated by the vessel’s computer system using specialised interpretation software, which had been calibrated for Gerry’s brain on the ten year journey between the solar system and the Sirius system. In essence, the research vessel could see everything Gerry sensed, as well as everything Gerry thought about.
Gerry strapped the antenna to his head and turned on the power.

“OK Wanker, ready to transmit.” He heard the muffled sounds of giggling over the speaker. “You can obviously see what I am thinking, then.”

“Yes, Gerry.” Wozniak replied. “Most of the women had to cover their eyes. Seeing me in a tutu is too much for most humans to handle.”

Gerry laughed. “You try having that image in your head, pal!”

“Can you give me a visual image of the approaching black hole?”

Gerry turned towards the window. “Do you get that?”

“Clear as crystal. How about mental audio?”

Gerry imagined the sound of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

“There are no uilleann pipes in the ode to joy, O’Hare.”

Gerry laughed. “Who are you, fookin’ Chopin?”

“Everything seems OK.” Said Wozniak. “You’re about to enter the event horizon, Gerry. Good Luck mate, if you don’t come back, it was a pleasure knowing you.”

“Likewise, now fook off!” Gerry had no time for sentiments. He was just as excited about experiencing this moment as Wozniak was in recording it. He likened himself to Magellan rounding Cape Horn for the first time. This was the new Pacific Ocean.

_________


Gerry awoke to an enormous racket in his ears. Why the hell was he asleep? He pondered. The most important moment in his life and he drifted off to sleep in the excitement! He opened his eyes, but what he felt was not consciousness as he had previously known it. He felt the consciousness of thousands of living souls, but at the same time it was kept together by a total overriding consciousness that he suspected as his own.

He began to talk to the ship’s recorder, ensuring that the information went back to the Marie Curie.

“Alright Wanker, getting some action here.” He began. “The singularity seems to be having an effect on my consciousness by allowing me to see a large amount of different life perspectives through my senses. It is kept together by a collective consciousness which I believe is my own.”

He continued. “My thoughts on the phenomenon at this stage is that I have passed into the singularity and am able to view many thousands of different portals of space time at once. I am yet to understand why the view I am seeing seems to be from the perspective of another sentient being, another consciousness. Fookin’ weird mate, I tell you.”

Gerry continued to move towards the black hole. As this happened, he felt the consciousness he had been experiencing change. The many thousands he was tuned in to were dying, and they were replaced by many millions, growing, learning and chattering. Sharing the consciousness and cognition of so many was very taxing on Gerry, and he began to groan with the effort.

“Gerry here.” His voice strained in the effort to talk. “This is fookin’ unbearable I tell you. The nature of the conscious beings I am tuned in to has completely changed. Their manner is far more removed from my own experience. You wouldn’t believe it, but I think some of them have taken up religion.”

Some of the conscious entities had created a religious organisation that worshipped a god they called “Gerry”. At first Gerry thought it may be a coincidence that he shared a name with their deity. But sure enough, he sensed an image of their deity and it looked exactly like him.

Gerry began to record his findings. “Gerry here, Wanker. The entities I have been sharing consciousness with have taken to worshipping me. This means that they are aware of me! It seems that even though I am a passive participant in their consciousness, they know my name and the way I look. They can only know this if they too participate in my consciousness.”

As Gerry moved further into the black hole, his million worshippers began to die. They were replaced by a trillion sentient beings, all sharing their consciousness and cognition with Gerry.
Although it hurt initially when the transitions occurred, Gerry eventually got used to having more sentient beings under his watch. However, it seemed that every time he got used to them the transitions occurred, leaving him in a perpetual state of mental anguish.

The new being’s understanding of their universe was so far removed from Gerry that he began to fear them. Many of them worshipped a deity, calling it Jah Ray, the deity looking very similar to Gerry but with darker features. They practiced strange cultural practices that Gerry considered repulsive, such as cannibalism and ritual killing to name a few. All actions were considered fine according to Jah Ray, who had approved of these actions.

This made Gerry angry. “I do not approve of you wankers!” He said, causing his minions to cower in fear. The mass whimpering was enough to send Gerry up the wall.

It was not to last however, as the entities began to die and be replaced with the square of their number – Gerry had direct access to the consciousness of close to a septillion separate sentient beings. It was becoming incredibly confusing for Gerry, as not only were the beings incredibly diverse but some were even more further removed from Gerry in terms of their worldview, thinking and acting in a way Gerry could not comprehend and which he thought was “fookin’ horrific”.

He decided to give another report to Wozniak on the Marie Curie, even though he was resigned to the fact that Wozniak had probably heard nothing of his account since he had crossed the event horizon.

“Gerry here, Wanker. The separate entities I am experiencing are increasingly more numerous, but still they all have some sort of awareness of my existence. I would believe it was a fractalisation of my own consciousness if I did not feel myself presiding over things – I am still able to talk to you, for example. I am beginning to think that these sentient beings are but components of my body, hence the fact that we are mutually connected but I most certainly have some power over their consciousness and they have none over mine. Is it possible that the change in the continuity of the space time continuum has brought alive various microcosms in my living body, microcosms that would otherwise not be sentient but at a certain dimension of space time become sentient? I know I sound confused, but it is becoming increasingly clear to me now that the universes that I am seeing are inside of me.”

Gerry turned back to the various conscious entities he was experiencing. He found some of them worshipping again but the name of their new god was “Yahweh”, the name of the god Gerry had professed allegiance to back in his home of Ireland. He saw his future, eternally travelling into this black hole and sharing in the lives of countless more beings that he was yet to meet. Although he was as popular as any person could imagine, he felt nothing but loneliness.

Being God is fookin' hard work, he said to himself.